elite ambassador: marshall miller

posted: March 25, 2014

Most guys who ski, climb, hike and trail-run prefer not to fall too much. For Marshall Miller, falling is the whole point. And he’s really good at it.

Marshall is a professional BASE jumper, skydiver, paraglider pilot—what you’d maybe call an all-around flight athlete. Falling (with style) is his sport. He climbs and hikes miles of steep mountain terrain just to jump off of stuff. He’ll skin up hills in the backcountry to ski over that perfect cliff. Once Marshall even took his parachute up the elevator of a Utah skyscraper—uninvited—so he could “excuse himself” from the 26th floor.

Yeah, dude plays hard.

But if ‘flight athlete’ sounds like a misnomer (gravity’s doing the work, right?) think again. Marshall trains every day. Just maybe not the way most guys do because a sport like his has its own sorts of demands. And they’re not all physical.

For Marshall, it starts with yoga. Every morning. He has to be limber in the air and relaxed in wild situations, like hitting terminal velocity in a freefall. Yoga helps with that. He also needs to stay in what he calls “mountain shape,” meaning strong legs and lungs for trekking to those far-out takeoff spots. He does ice- and rock-climbing. He does TRX. “I hike in and around my mountains,” he says. “And fly back to my car.”

Obviously, Marshall thinks a bit differently about the concept of sport. Who said you need a ball or a finish line? Who said you need a league or opponents? Marshall’s fit, paid and well-travelled thanks to a passion for human flight and the drive to write his own ticket—literally sometimes, like to the Matterhorn.